Words Dept.: entry

As a follower (and member) of Amnesty, I was perturbed to read this tweet from their official Twitter account this afternoon:

Gordon is right. She is a bigoted woman. Here is a tip Love, where have all the Eastern Europeans come from? How about Eastern Europe!

The tweet has since been deleted from the web but here’s a grab from Tweetie:

It was all very strange, since Amnesty rarely, if ever, uses its Twitter stream for anything outside the sphere of human rights. The use of the word “love” and the sarcastic tone were also most unlike them.

A few minutes later, this tweet appeared, disclaiming responsibility:

I can only apologise massively for our last tweet – trying to work out how it happened. Obviously, not Amnesty’s view.

Subsequently, the charity said it had changed its Twitter password. In an @reply, it confirmed the tweet had been sent by a staff member, but blamed a “very obscure Tweetdeck bug” for accidently sending the message from the AmnestyUK account instead of the individual’s own account, adding: “We’re a bit baffled.”